A “cluster computing system” is a group of linked computing components working together closely so that in many respects they form a single computer. A plurality of computing components such as blade computers may be used together to form a cluster computing system. To this end, multiple blade computers may be inserted into a blade enclosure. The blade enclosure may provide resources, such as power sources, networking, cooling elements (e.g., fans) and backplanes that are shared among multiple blade computers. Sharing these resources between multiple blade computers causes the overall utilization to become more efficient.
In a system of multiple computing components, such as a blade enclosure hosting a plurality of blade computers, each computing component may include a management processor (sometimes referred to as a baseboard management controller or “BMC”) that is charged with various management tasks on that computing component. These management tasks may include monitoring temperature, cooling fan speeds, power mode, operating system status, and the like. The management processor of each blade may monitor these parameters and exchange information about these parameters with various outside entities, such as a blade enclosure controller. These communications may occur in many instances using the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) protocols.
A plurality of computing components may be allocated among one or more logical partitions. Each logical partition may operate as an independent cluster computing system that has available to it the software and hardware resources of every computing component that forms part of the logical partition. For example, a first subset of blade computers in a blade enclosure may be allocated to a first partition, where they will cooperate to form a first cluster computing system. Likewise, a second subset of blade computers in the enclosure may be allocated to a second partition, where they will cooperate to form a second cluster computing system. Management of resources of each blade may become difficult where each blade includes a separate management processor.
Management of partitions often is controlled by an entity outside of the plurality of computing components, such as by a processor on the blade enclosure. Situations may arise where one or more computing components of a partition are to be allocated to a different partition. In such cases, either all computing components of the system may be rebooted, or a centralized processor, such as a processor on a blade enclosure, may shut down computing components of individual partitions without affecting computing components of other partitions. However, in the latter case, reallocation is dependant on the centralized processor.